Solidarity vs. Cruelty: Thousands in NYC Protest Trump-Musk Destruction
Immigrant Rights Are Workers’ Rights: Youngsters help lead May Day rally and march in New York City on Thursday. Photos/Steve Wishnia.
By Steve Wishnia
Thousands of people crammed Foley Square May Day for a May 1 rally and march to protest basically everything the Trump-Musk regime is doing. “100 Days of Cruelty is Enough” read one sign.
“Donald Trump is doing everything he can to destroy collective bargaining, destroy the Department of Education, and privatize education, Social Security, and Medicare, so he can use our economy as his personal wallet,” said retired teacher Anne-Marie Cicciu, a United Federation of Teachers member.
The rally, organized by the New York City Central Labor Council as part of nationwide protests, drew large contingents of union teachers, stagehands, laborers, painters, nurses, deliveristas, hotel workers, and federal-government workers. A “Hands Off Trans Kids” sign waved next to a Laborers Local 1010 banner.
“The billionaire class should be afraid of the power of labor and everyday workers throughout this country,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told the crowd. “When I go back to Washington, they talk about it, and they are afraid.”
The Republican caucus in the House, she added, had just postponed marking up a bill to cut Medicaid. “They see you, New York,” she said.
Still, Ocasio-Cortez warned, the markup session was rescheduled for May 12. She urged the crowd to pressure local Republican House members such as Nicole Malliotakis of Staten Island, Nick LaLota of Long Island, and Mike Lawler of the Hudson Valley.
Organizing is music to their ears: Mariachi players stand with local union organizers, including longtime Ironworkers organizer Eddie Jorge (glasses).
A combination of protest and solidarity was a common motive for turning out. “All our rights are being stripped away. There’s no due process. You have to show up wherever you can,” New York State Nurses Association member Stacy Dillon told Work-Bites.
“It’s my first time ever doing something like this,” said Gustavo Canales, a welder and Local 1010 member. “It’s exciting. We’re united. We’ve gotta be united.”
“One word—unity,” said Pac-Man, an International Union of Painters and Allied Trades Local 9 member. “We don’t need to be divided by nobody.”
Monica Coniglio, a shop steward with Local 98 of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, told the rally that she hadn’t been very involved in her union until recently—but after a Trump executive order stripped collective-bargaining rights away from 77% of federal workers, “I traded reading novels for books on civil rights.”
“We need Medicare for All,” Dr. Roona Ray, who was laid off from Elmhurst Hospital in Queens when she was eight months pregnant, urged. “We need more unions. The only thing rich tyrants fear is our solidarity.”
Shelby, an American Association of University Professors member who teaches writing at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, told Work-Bites that she came out “on behalf of higher education.”
Laborers union members fill Foley Square on May Day.
“We want our NIH funding back,” she added. The DOGE slashing of National Institutes of Health staff and grants for scientific research will likely devastate universities, she and her friend said.
Immigrant-rights groups provided another large contingent. Many people carried Free Kilmar Abrego Garcia signs, referring to the Salvadoran refugee construction worker who was one of the more than 200 immigrants the Trump regime sent to a concentration-camp prison in El Salvador in March, defying multiple court orders. There were also multiple Marxist-Leninist groups, most with pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel signage.
Protesters moved out of the northwest corner of Foley Square, up the incline on Worth Street, and then turned left of Broadway, where the march stretched for several blocks. A sanitation worker carried his curly-haired son. People cheered as a drag queen in a bikini top and leather hotpants danced on top of a police van, and when three Latino construction workers hailed them from the top of a sidewalk-shelter scaffold. Children with bullhorns led the Proyecto Justicia Laboral (Workers Justice Project) worker-center contingent. Two men wore “Anti Eric Adams Social Club” T-shirts. A woman with a cylindrical boombox played “Solidarity Forever.”
“I’m representing all labor unions to continue our ability to bargain collectively, against fascism, and against a federal government that does not believe education leads to a better future,” said Ian Stuart, waving a blue United Federation of Teachers banner in front of the union’s headquarters on lower Broadway.
An 11-piece mariachi band greeted marchers as they arrived at Bowling Green.
PSC-CUNY member holds sign calling for the release of illegally deported and jailed union apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
“It was a great event,” Dennis Trainor, vice president of Communications Workers of America District One, told Work-Bites as the march ended. “We need to stand together against all the things that Trump is doing. We have to continually do this, keep on showing everyone we’re united.”
What’s the next move? “If unions need to call a general strike, it’s one thing in our tool bag,” Trainor said. That’s not likely to be imminent, he added, but “if Trump decides to get rid of unions like Reagan did the air-traffic controllers, we’ll need to fight back.”